According to the Tao Te Ching, the Dao
- and that means Daoism too - is inexpressible; what I write here is my
understanding of it. Daoism has some connection to the "dialectical"
part of the Marxist philosophy; however it does not accept the
"materialism" of the Marxist viewpoint. From the latter viewpoint
Daoism is a form of "dialectical idealism"; but that is not how
Daoism sees itself. What Marxists call "contradiction" is what
Daoists call "the interaction of opposites". However Marxism sees the
opposites as antagonistic, enemies engaged in a struggle, whereas Daoists see
them as complementary. The fact that there are anomalous cases in nature, which
seem to be between the poles, does not alter the general pattern: nature's
symmetry is often inexact. The pattern of complementarity is seen both in
nonliving forces such as the electromagnetic force, as well as in living
species that sexually reproduce, and probably other symmetries too. Whether by
chance or design, such polarity is one of the recurring patterns in nature.

Heraclitus may have been a Daoist, as
Frijof Capra suggests (The Tao of Physics), but Capra is wrong in saying that
Daoism is "a way of liberation from this world"; this idea was foreign
to China until Buddhist missionaries arrived around 2000 years ago, and they
therefore disguised their religion as a form of Daoism (both extolled
simplicity and tranquillity): thus was born Zen, a blend of the two. Daoism is
life-affirming, as can be seen in Jolan Chang's book The Tao of Love and Sex
(one might almost sum it up as "copulate or perish"; the retention of
semen allowed a more active sex life). See also Max Weber, The Religion of
China, Arnold Toynbee, Mankind and Mother Earth, and Joseph Needham/Colin
Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China. All three were interested
in the parallels and interconnections between the cultural centres, something,
it seems, no longer acceptable to our Marxist mindset today, in which the great
civilisations are dismissed as "oriental despotisms", their
achievements as those of their "ruling class". The past must be
hated; it is to blame for our oppression. We condemn its inequality, while
denying our own.

Daoism is a metaphysics. But it makes
no grand claims; it cannot be used to predict the future; it offers no
casuistry. It gives advice, not orders; it leaves much to good sense and
intuition. It has been found relevant for thousands of years, by scholars and
mystics alike. Bertrand Russell and Arnold Toynbee quoted from the Tao Te Ching
; Thomas Merton edited the writings of another Daoist, Chuang Tzu, and wrote,
"I have enjoyed writing this book more than any other I can
remember". Merton notes similarities with The Book of Ecclesiastes and
certain Christian writings which emphasise simplicity. Needham (abridged by
Ronan) calls Taoism "the only system of mysticism the world has ever seen
that was not profoundly anti-scientific"; the Tao Te Ching "perhaps
the most profound and beautiful work in the Chinese language". Wing-Tsit
Chan says, "No one can hope to understand Chinese philosophy, religion,
government, art, medicine, and even cooking without a real appreciation of the
profound philosophy taught in this little book" (The Way of Lao Tzu). Its
advice is in the form of aphorisms - proverbs - which compare with the Wisdom
literature of the Middle East. They are universalistic and, amazingly for texts
of 2500 years ago, secular: the wisdom is the advice of people from the past,
rather than the instructions of gods. To my mind, all such books and oral
traditions, of all peoples big and small, should be treasured by the whole of
humanity - whether we agree with their advice or not. They are a prized part of
the human heritage; yet are not humanistic in the sense of human-centred: they
recognise that the cosmos as a whole, or life as a whole, is greater than
humanity, and that we should be humble before it.

Marx, influenced by Scholastic
system-builders, wove the dialectic of Heraclitus into a one-variable theory of
everything which in his view could explain the details, even the minute
details, of everything. Daoism makes no such claims. The Daoist dialectic is a
thought-process and method of operation which, Daoists believe, is an
attunement to a natural process in the universe, like the tuning of a radio to
a radio-station; this process is considered a "natural power". One
can work against the natural process, but the going will be hard. In the
Marxist view of human society, the process of "contradiction" can
actually stop - cease - once a perfect society has been attained, because then
there will be no further antagonism within it: a key point in Marxism is that
it is possible to have a perfect human society. Daoism regards such a
proposition as foolish, an attempt to have light without shadow - it accepts
the imperfections in this world but tries to live with them; this life has its
pains but also its pleasures. We have seen how the utopias envisaged by Lenin
and Mao turned into barbaric bloodbaths. In the Daoist view, this is because
they had a "crash through or crash" approach, they were prepared to
push an extreme position as far as it would go. Daoism shies back from such
positive-feedback processes; it prefers negative-feedback processes. In the
governance of human society, it prefers as little as possible - this is called
"the method of non-action". It trusts natural processes, including
human nature; in this respect it is similar to the European philosophy of
Anarchism, but Anarchism accepts revolutionary violence while Daoism does not.
Nor is Daoism foolish enough to think that a mass society can operate without
some form of government. China has had a mass society for thousands of years,
so the proverbs of the Tao Te Ching are addressed not only to ordinary men and
women, but also to rulers and officials. In large part, it is a philosophy of
coping with powerlessness. One translator (R.L. Wing, The Tao of Power), says
that it "explores a remarkable power that is latent in every
individual", a bottom-up power; Machiavelli's is top-down. Confucianism is
an authoritarian philosophy of benevolent rule; the Daoist philosophy has
co-existed with it in what might be called "the Confucian Culture
Complex". Daoism, though, has generally been the "low road", inconspicuous.
In Japan, Zen is the most obvious form of Daoism. John Craig, analysing the
flexibility of Japanese planning and production systems, sees in it dialectical
methods adopted from Zen (Centre for Policy and Development Systems, Brisbane).
A culture is like a bag of lego; Japan's bag contains Daoism, ours does not.

Although in themselves peaceful,
Daoism and Zen have been used in the martial arts and the art of war. "To
subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence", wrote Sun
Tzu 2400 years ago (The Art of War ). Western concepts of military strategy in
recent centuries have been based on the gross crash-through-or-crash theory of
Clausewitz. Recently an American strategist. Edward Luttwak, has written a book
Strategy which uses the Daoist logic of paradox without acknowledging its
Chinese source. However the titles of key chapters give the clue: The Conscious
Use of Paradox in War, and The Coming Together of Opposites. This book uses
Daoist "dialectical" analysis. It is non-linear, whereas Western
culture takes Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle too seriously, and is
immersed in linear thought patterns; some examples are ¥ the Christian view of
history as a continuous process of salvation to a final resolution ¥ the
Christian view of the life of the individual from birth to heaven or hell;
there is no place for reincarnation as envisaged by many aboriginal and Eastern
peoples ¥ the theory of evolution: some set-backs and dead-ends, but overall
"progressive" ¥ Hegel's progressive idealism and Marx' progressive
materialism, both linear views of history ¥ Social Evolutionism, even
non-Marxist, as a belief in continuous "progress" ¥ the notion that
public opinion forms a (one-dimensional) linear spectrum from conservative to progressive
¥ science as continuing progress, with discovery building upon discovery ¥ the
"hard" and "soft" determinist positions among Anglo-Saxon
word-philosophers (who reduce philosophy to an analysis of the meaning of
words, an infinite regress since one cannot describe meaning without using
words; the post-structuralists are their descendants) ¥ linear development in
books and films.

I do not deny that linear patterns
occur in nature; they do. But so do cyclic patterns. Hegel's history is linear,
Spengler's is cyclic; but both envisaged a Law of Necessity. Rather,
"progess" is fragile and contingent, not necessary; if patterns can
be discerned enabling us to look ahead and predict the trend, they only enable
us to look a little way ahead, and with uncertainty. We have become so used to
thinking in terms of historical "laws" that we have overlooked the
fragility of our own culture. I argue that the rigidity in the Western approach
can be attributed to the Platonic legacy. If Western philosophy is but footnotes
to Plato, then it is time to throw it out and start again. Like Carl Sagan in
his book Cosmos, I find value in the presocratics rather than in Plato and his
cronies. The West is rigid and dogmatic because it has placed its faith in the
reality of unchanging Forms more real than the natural world we see around us,
a path pioneered by Plato, perhaps derived from the Pythagoreans, and later
followed by Christian monastics and scholastics, by the Rousseau-Marx
"Left" tradition, in the Western legal system and in administration
generally. It shows itself in the excessive preoccupation with religious dogma,
secular (scientific) dogma, obsession about unchanging constitutions, treaties
and contracts, in the preference for theory-trained people over
practical-trained people, and in the importance placed in the submission of
"plans" in general administration. The modern Japanese production
system has made the Platonic legacy a liability in Western cultures riddled
with it. Examples follow.

Our legalistic reliance on Constitutions,
Statements of Rights-in-Theory (which are not those-in-reality), Treaties
(compare the flexibility the Japanese negotiators insist on, demanding that a
contract be changeable according to changing circumstances). We have Lawyers;
in relative terms, they do not. In theory, our lawyers promote justice for all;
in practice, the Law is a lottery, a heavy burden, and lawyers a den of
thieves. By emphasising the theory of how something is, when the practice is
different, we Westerners create a division in our own minds. The disparity
between theory and practice is probably present in all cultures, but I venture
that it is moreso in the West on account of our Platonic legacy, and less in
Japan on account of the lack of interest in grand theory, the attention to
detail in nature (part Zen, part Shinto), rather than the turning away from
nature (to some more-real World of Forms). The nature religion of Shinto has
some commonalities with the Dionysiac tradition of Greece, the Shivaism of
India and the Osiris/Isis cult of Ancient Egypt. All involve a worship of the
sex organs as symbols of life, the enjoyment of life on earth despite the
hardships, the inequities and the necessity of death. Like Daoism their secular
correlate, they see complementary polarity as a metaphysical feature of the
universe. This viewpoint, however, does not seek to impose itself on those who
are different, who seek to join male with male or female with female. It does
not try to stop them, but it says that they are anomalies, they are not the
main pattern. If they wish to celebrate their difference, then so be it, but
let them do so without disparaging the main pattern. If they cannot do that,
what are their motives?

The desire to finalise debate, to
attain certainty, to shut the door on one issue after another, is a feature
which academic humanism has inherited from the dogmatism of the Catholic Church
[footnote 1]. There is no need for a secular equivalent for these dogmas -
whether the dogmatism of Marx, of Radical Feminism, of simplistic versions of
the Evolution theory, or of the Big Bang theory. The Daoist approach is to
leave all debates open. Living with uncertainty is part of the "negative
way"; it is in keeping with the best scientific method expressed by Karl
Popper: unless a proposition has been disproved, it may be true. The Dogmatic
Sceptics, instead, assume a proposition wrong unless it has been proved true;
their "sticks and stones" viewpoint was credible in decades past,
when it was thought that the nature of "matter" had been finalised;
today, the nature of matter is as uncertain as it has ever been, and so the
rock of certainty that the dogmatic sceptics thought they were standing on,
turns out to be an illusion. Even the nature of "proof" is
problematical: is a hypothesis "proved" or "disproved" (or
should some secular equivalent of the Pope declare it so) when 51% of the
experts in that field agree so; or when 100% agree; or 99%? Could not all 100%
agree, and yet later be found wrong? Should the views of credible people who
are generalists, or experts in another field, be taken into account (Fred
Hoyle, for example, constantly escapes from his little "box" of
expertise)? Who is the arbiter of credibility - who decides admission to the
debate? Or publishability? Is not such a person, necessarily, the secular
equivalent of the Pope? These are problems not about the nature of reality but
about the limitations of our knowledge. Leaving all debates open is a way of
recognising that limitation, of allowing for uncertainty. It is a matter not of
solipsism, absurdity or relativism, but of prudence. We need not change our
language, inserting a percentage-of-probability into every sentence; or become
indecisive, unable to perform our daily work under the weight of the
uncertainty. It should inhibit us no more than does rash certainty. We know
that chairs are not solid as they seem, but are mostly "space"
(whatever that is [footnote 2]) or "void"; but that does not stop us
from sitting on them.

Our courts distinguish between
"the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"; I propose
that we all need to do so. Too often, empirical data is thrown away because it
does not fit our theory; at the back of our minds is Aristotle's Law of the
Excluded Middle. As different blindfolded people feel different parts of the
same elephant, each is tempted to think that the data of the others is
inconsistent with his own data. It is like assembling adjacent pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle into blocks, but with discontinuities where the blocks do not seem
to fit together, such that we are inclined to throw some away. How can we be
sure, for example, that biological evolution is incompatible with the possible
existence of ghosts or an afterlife? Except by willing it so, in a process
called Dogmatic Scepticism. Worst of all is the habit developed by Wittgenstein
and the British word-philosophers, of condemning the arguments of those they
disagree with as "meaningless". This tag is a substitute for
argument, like the worst sloganising. Describing one's opponent's argument as
"meaningless" is the cheap and nasty way of escaping from having to
show him to be wrong; it terminates dialogue.

Finally, some comments on Plans. As a
do-it-yourselfer, I once built my own house in the countryside; now, years
later, I want to do so again. In many parts of the world I would work out the
design as I built, flexibly adapting to circumstances (problems I encountered,
new knowledge, even whim). I would be constantly making small modifications to
the plan in my mind, through a succession of feedback cycles. But in our
Western custom, I am required to present a rigid unchanging "Plan"
for approval, all worked out in advance, costing a lot of money, and with
financial penalties for changing it. Now in some cases, big city buildings,
designs for cars, a plan is necessary of course; the issue is to what extent
the planning process is taken. The houses of Canberra are all planned, and from
the outside look majestic and dominating, yet I have hardly found any whose
feel, inside, I liked. The most attractive houses I know were built by novice
owner-builders in the countryside, with minimal or no supervision by building
"inspectors" (often enough they are bureaucrats rather than
tradesmen, following written rules on matters they themselves do not
understand), people whose house was to them an expression of their own
creativity. The Platonic legacy has stifled our creativity; it has become a
straightjacket. The Socialist (Communist) movement founded by Marx is well
known for the saying, "Workers of the World Unite ... You Have Nothing To
Lose But your Chains." Less well known is that Marx' word chains refers to
a key sentence at the start of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
father of the French Revolution: "Main Is Born Free, But Is Everywhere In
Chains". It is stirring stuff. Yet in his Confessions, Rousseau admits
that he placed all five of his children (born to his defacto wife Therese, whem
he married later in life), into an orphanage, one by one AT BIRTH, and never
saw any of them again. Only the first was even given a personal name prior to
being handed over. So much for them being "BORN FREE"; the fact is
that nobody is born free: everybody is born into particular circumstances
he/she does not choose. Rousseau justifies this action as follows: "in
handing my children over for the State to educate ... I thought I was acting as
a citizen and a father, and looked upon myself as a member of Plato's
Republic." See The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Penguin edition,
pages 322, 333, 334, 385-7. I can think of no greater indictment of Plato's
Republic.

Although Rousseau did not rear even
one child, of his own or anyone else, his book Emile has been acclaimed by Left
educators and many of its precepts (e.g. against rote learning) are followed in
our schools today. This shows the extent to which Western intellectuals are
prepared to elevate theory over practice. Marx envisaged his Proletarian State
as an implementation of Plato's Republic along the lines sketched out by
Rousseau in The Social Contract. The rule would be, not by manual workers but
by intellectuals: academics, theory-trained professionals, scientists:
Philosopher Kings. In Russia, this was clear by 1920; Alexandra Kollontai drew
attention to it. As Paul Johnson points out in his book Intellectuals, we
intellectuals - I am one too - are just as liable to make mistakes as are
non-intellectuals, and we are dangerous when we band together to control some
sort of movement in the Leninist style. It is when intellectuals speak in a
babble of discordant opinion, rather than in a chorus of similitude, that
intellectual life is flourishing.

Now I return to the Tao Te Ching:
there are a number of English translations, and the expressions
"Heaven" and "Heaven and Earth" appear in most, meaning, it
seems, Nature or All-things, not in a transcendant way. Confucian and Daoist
thought does not envisage a personal God, human-like with emotions, likes,
dislikes, a body etc., but an impersonal power. The original Buddhism of
Gautama was "atheistic" in the sense of denying a personal God, yet
the impersonal principle (or Law) of Karma might be seen as amounting to an
impersonal God. Even Hinduism, ostensibly with its myriad of gods and
goddesses, sees them all as merely manifestations of an impersonal power called
Brahma. This concept is not found in the Judeo-Christian-Humanist tradition;
the "deist" concept is of an absent God, whereas the Eastern concept
is of an impersonal but present God. As Reg Little (co-author of The Confucian
Renaissance) commented to me, the East thinks of Divinity as Impersonal but Civil Law as Personal
(left to the wisdom of the ruler; not codified), whereas the West thinks of
Divinity as Personal but Civil Law as Impersonal ("rule of law": in contracts,
constitutions, lists of rights). In Eastern thought there is no point in
attempting a theory of everything because, in a sentence attributed to Gautama,
"an atom can never understand the universe". In recent centuries
German philosophers imported the pantheist concept from the East. This was the
philosophy of the man I adopted as my personal Guru, Albert Einstein. He called
it "Cosmic Religion", and wrote articles about it. Adopting him as a Guru
does not mean that he was perfect, or that one must agree with everything he
said, in Physics or any other domain. It simply means finding him an
inspiration, uplifting. If some biographer discovers that he had faults, that
does not matter too much, because we all do; if we did not, we would be gods.
Anyway, Einstein did not seek power over others.

Daoists acknowledge that there are
people who willingly cause harm, but we would say that even the worst person
has some redeeming qualities. We do not believe in a Devil. Modern cosmology
has a place for both order and chaos, but not for antagonistic polarities one
absolutely good, the other absolutely bad, engaged in an all-out war whose aim
is the elimination of one or the other. Death and suffering are, despite our best
efforts, unavoidably part of life, not only for humans but for other species
too; without death there could not be birth. Even Seth of Ancient Egypt was not
depicted as absolutely evil. We should stay away from those who dabble in
sorcery or "black" magic, such as the witchcraft of Alistair Crowley.
How it is done I do not know - perhaps by hypnosis or suggestion; perhaps by
e.s.p. if that phenomenon occurs; perhaps as a form of remote hyponosis we not
understand; perhaps, as the practitioners themselves say, by the intervention
of "ghosts" or "demons". Even should this latter case be
true, Eastern thought does not elevate such an entity to the power or
fearfulness of the Christian Devil; it is instead seen as a more manageable,
human-scale problem: they are to be pitied because they too are suffering in a
sort of prison - one may even be able to help them to get out of their
"hell realm". On the other hand, the Dogmatic Sceptics may be right
about all such cases; as a practitioner of the philosophy of uncertainty, I
leave such matters unfinalised.

The new age movement is in grave
danger at present, of promoting witchcraft without adequate cautions against
the causing of harm to others. If old religions are to be reinvented, in a
sense, the vindictive bits, such as the occasional human sacrifice, should be
left out. I fear that new age feminists are insufficiently rigorous in warning
against this danger. Daoism, as a secular philosophy, offers all I want; my
gods and goddesses are mere symbols.

Footnotes

1. In defence of the Catholic Church,
it might be pointed out that the first Councils, called to decide matters of
doctrine and pronounce them as dogma, were called not by a Pope or Bishop but
by Constantine, in 313, 314, 325, 334 & 335 . See A. H. M. Jones,
Constantine and the Conversion of Europe; the canon of New Testament books was
declared at Carthage in 397. Constantine's vision - a cross upon the sun -
meant that Jesus was a manifestation of the Sun God (Mithra, Sol Invictus); he
continued to issue coins showing his head with the Sun, and the Church did its
best to blur the difference between the two religions: it had moved the sabbath
from Saturday (Saturn's day) to Sunday (the Sun's day); now it moved Christmas
from January 6th (still its date in the Orthodox Churches) to December 25th,
the winter solistice, feast day of the Sun God. The monstrance, still used in
Catholic and High Anglican Churches, shows golden rays radiating out from the
consecrated host in the centre: Jesus as Sun God (see Jacquetta Hawkes, Man and
the Sun). In earlier times Yahweh himself was presented as a Sun God, riding on
a fiery "throne chariot" (the Merkabah) pulled by sphinxes (cherubim,
i.e. winged lions), as Margaret Barker shows. The chariot was introduced into
the Middle East by Indo-European invaders about 2000BC (Hittites etc.; they
ruled as an aristocracy, then disappeared). The Merkabah cult was prominent in
Jewish mysticism at the time of Jesus. But Constantine wanted to use
Christianity as a "religion of state", the Empire having been unable
to defeat it. For this purpose he needed to resolve the squabbles between the
various "heresies". Thus was born the dogmatism perpetuated in our
universities today. I myself am the product of a Catholic seminary: I was
"dux" at Springwood in 1968; it later closed. In the 1980s a home
birth conference was held there; if only I had known - I am a advocate of home
birth, three of my own children were born at home!

2. or as some philosophers would have
it, "whatever that word means" - I could not stand to have such a
person around the house for too long at a time. Such a person must use a
"meta-language" all the time.

To Taoists, modernity is a
meaningless concept because truth is timeless and life goes in
circles. In post-modern thinking in the West, much of the awareness that
Taoists have entertained for centuries is just now surfacing. Even in military
strategy, Sun Tzu's On the Art of War (Sunzi Bingfa), an ancient Taoist
military treatise (500 BC), is now much in vogue in this modern age of weapons
of mass destruction and remote-controlled precision bombs.

Historians are uncertain of the
historical facts regarding Laozi, founder of Taoism. The name itself casts
doubt on Laozi's identity. Ad verbum, it simply means "old sage".
Colloquially, the term laozi in modern Chinese has come to mean an arrogant
version of "yours truly". The earliest documented information on
Laozi appears in the classic Records of the Historian (Shi Ji), written
by historian Sima Qian in 108 BC during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). It
describes Laozi as a person named Li Er (born around 604 BC) who worked as a
librarian in the court of the State of Eastern Zhou (Dong Zhou) during the
Spring and Autumn Period (Chunqiu, 770-481 BC).

Laozi was reported to have met only
once the young Confucius (Kongfuzi, 551-479 BC), who was 53 years his junior.
If intellectual exchanges took place at that celebrated meeting, Confucius had
to be at least in his late 20s, thus placing Laozi in his 80s when the two sages
purportedly met. Confucius did not become widely known until 500 BC at the age
of 51, which would put Laozi's age at 104 if they met as two intellectual
celebrities. No wonder the pundit was called "old sage".

Laozi is generally accepted as author
of the Classic of the Virtuous Path (Daode Jing), although
evidence has been uncovered to suggest that it was actually written by others
long after his time, albeit based on ideas ascribed to him. The Book of
Virtuous Path is written in a style that is both cryptic and enigmatic. The
true meanings of its messages are difficult to elucidate definitively. Its main
attraction lies in the requirement of active reader participation for receiving
the full benefit of its mystic insights. Each reading solicits new levels of
insights from the reader depending on his or her experience, mood, mental
alertness and preoccupation. It asks questions rather than provides answers. It
is a book of revelation with an effect similar to what the Bible has on devoted
Christians.

{"revelation" in the sense
of "insight", not prescriptive as in the case of the Bible}

Zhuangzhou, a Zhou Dynasty skeptic and
mystic who lived in 4th century BC, in his classic Zhuangzi expounded on many
of Laozi's doctrines with original insight, ingenious construct,
incisive witticism and delightful charm. Drawing on Taoist concepts, Zhuangzhou
opposed and ridiculed the moral utilitarianism of Confucius.

Tao or Dao, a Chinese word meaning
"way" or "path", delineates an enlightened perception of
the mysterious ways of life. The path of life is revealed professedly only
through spontaneous insights and creative breakthroughs. The alternating,
self-renewing and circular phenomenon of nature such as day following night
following day is an illuminating Taoist paradigm. The life-regenerating cycle
of the seasons is another example. Taoists believe all in life to be
inseparably interrelated. Taoists consider conventional wisdom illusionary.
They point out that concepts are merely cognitive extremes of a
consciousness continuum. Extremes exist only as contrasting points to give
distinctive meanings to the unthinking, but in truth, these extremes are
inseparable interdependent polarities. There can be no life without
death, no goodness without evil and no happiness without tragedy. Light
shines only in darkness. We only know something has been forgotten after we
remember it. There is no modernity without tradition. Behind this dualistic
illusion, a unifying, primary principle of life endures. It is called Tao. ...

Yet it would be a mistake to regard
Taoism as fatalistic and pessimistic, instead of the ultimate sophistication in
optimism that it is. Controlled quantities of the bad can be good.
Excessive amounts of the good can be bad. Poison kills. But when handled
properly, it can cure diseases. Without poison, there can be no medicine. To
employ poison to attack poison is a Taoist principle, which is validated in
modern medical the practice of vaccination, the use of antibiotics and
chemotherapy treatments. ...

For a specialization to be truly
useful, it needs to be defined so inclusively that excessive specialization
itself becomes a pitfall to avoid. The corollary: the desire for one's
objective will block one's attainment of it. This is so because the distracting
impact of one's desire will obscure one's focus on the objective itself. ...

It is a Taoist axiom that
intellectual scholarship and analytical logic can only serve to dissect and
categorize information. Knowledge, different from information, is achieved
only through knowing. Ultimately, only intuitive understanding can provide
wisdom. Truth, while elusive, exists. But it is obscured by search, because
purposeful search will inevitably mislead the searcher from truth. By focusing
on the purpose, the searcher can only find what he is looking for. How does
one know what questions to ask about truth if one does not know what the
elusive answers should be? Conversely, if one knows already what the answers
should be, why does one need to ask questions? Lewis Carroll's Alice in Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland (1865) would unknowingly be a Taoist.

Taoists believe that the dao (path) of
life, since it eludes taxonomic definition and intellectual pursuit, can only
be intuitively experienced through mystic meditation, by special breathing
exercises and sexual techniques to enhance the mind and harmonize the body.
They believe that these mind-purifying undertakings, coupled with an ascetic
lifestyle and lean diet, would also serve to prolong life. Taoist philosophy is
referred to as Xuanxue, literally "mystic learning". ...

Taoists consider Confucian reliance on
the Code of Rites (Liji) to guide socio-political behavior as oppressive and
self-defeating. ...

Since the only way to avoid the trap
of life's vicious circle is to limit one's ambition, why not eliminate ambition
entirely? Would that not ensure success in life? But a little ambition is a
good thing. Total elimination, even of undesirables, is an extreme solution,
and it is therefore self-defeating. ...

Taoism as religion is generally
regarded by intellectuals as a corruption of its essence as philosophy. Having
evolved originally from a mystic search for truth, Taoism has gradually
degenerated into practices of secular alchemy aiming to achieve the
transformation of commonplace metals into gold, and to discover cures for
diseases and formulae for longevity and secrets to immortality. ...